When Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was 6 years old and attending school for the first time, she found herself captivated by what she described as "the elixir of crayons and paints." So strong was her artistic inclination that her teacher told her that she could paint whenever she finished her work early.

She hasn't stopped painting since.

But what has changed for Quick-to-See Smith over the ensuing seven decades is the scale and subjects of her work. Today, Quick-to-See Smith is an internationally-collected artist known for painting massive, vibrantly colored canvases that are comparable to collages with their combination of text and imagery.

Smith said those collages are drawn from her experience and world view as a member of the Salish and Kootenai Native American tribes and present a Native American perspective on such issues as war, the environment, oppression and Native identity.

"My messages here are real, they are from a real place," Smith said. "They are from our tribe."

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Northern Colorado residents will have the unique chance to get up close and personal to many of those messages at "In the Footsteps of My Ancestors," an exhibition of Quick-to-See Smith's work that runs through Sept. 21. It brings together 44 of the pieces she has created over the course of her long career.

Among the large canvases that greet visitors at the entrance as they enter through a section of paintings about war, are several pieces that combine to show a large canoe stuffed with a variety of figures and objects. Those who scan the scene for a few seconds will likely find several familiar elements — the Batman logo, among them — and will perhaps recognize the basis of the work as Picasso's "Guernica."

Quick-to-See Smith said the piece, like the famed painting that inspired it, is meant to make a statement about war — and does so by bringing together war-related images from both classic art and pop culture, including characters from Disney movies that Quick-to-See Smith said represent the consumerism that the American invasion of Iraq brought to the country.

"A lot of the work in here is about how Natives are against war," she said. "What you read in the history books is not accurate about Indians and war. Our homelands were being invaded and we were so oppressed and were objecting and so they called it the Indian wars, which is a misnomer."

Another painting shows words and images surrounding a buffalo with the words "Spam" painted below it in reference to the destructive cultural practices that have made many Native Americans dependent on commodity foods like Spam, rather than the healthier buffalo meat they had previously consumed for centuries. Meanwhile, collection of plastic baskets at the front of the exhibit makes concrete the environmental themes that are present in many of Quick-to-See Smith's paintings.

"The baskets are made from petroleum," she said, "and so my point is when you drill for oil you can harm this rainforest and you kill the animals and the birds with the methane that goes into the ground. And all you get are these plastic baskets that are going to be there forever because plastic never goes away."

But while Quick-to-See Smith's pieces clearly come with a strong ideological and narrative bent, she said it is not her objective to tell those who view her work what to think.

"If I wanted to tell you something, I could just make a poster and put 'respect nature' or 'no more war' on it — and we've all seen things like that," she said. "My intent is to make a piece of art and the messages that are in there may be read or interpreted by someone's own life experience."

That opportunity is one Loveland Museum Art Curator Maureen Covey said she is very excited to provide in Loveland.

"An artist of Jaune's magnitude is really just a big deal for us to have," she said. "When you read an art history 101 book you are going to read about Jaune."

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